Upgrading vCOPS (within and) to vROPS

Because of massive changes in architecture in vRealize Operations Manager 6.x (vROPS) a in-place upgrade from version prior to 6.0 is not an option. The way to migrate your collected data to vROPS is a side-to-side migration. This means you install a new vROPS system and link to your existing vCOPS system. vROPS copies data to its own DBs and uses your historical data. Your existing vCOPS can act as before. So you can use both versions simultaneously.

I will list the steps you need to take to do this migration in this post.

Consider these requirements

(vCOPS = source; vROPS = target)

• vCOPS version has to be at least 5.8.1. So you need to upgrade if you use an older version. To do so, download the update package (pak-file) to current version. Use Admin-GUI (https://vcops-ui/admin) to update.
  Tips:
  • Change Admin-password before update to current version! in 5.8.x a new password policy expires the Admin-password and update process failes! You can run chage -l username to show information about password expiration. Use /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/conf/install/resetadminpwd.sh new_password to change password – you can’t use the same password.
  • Check log file: /var/log/vmware/updatecoordinator.log during or after update.
• You need to install vROPS WITHOUT running configuration wizard (wizard where you could import data from previous version). How to enroll appliance see here. Do not add a vCenter to vROPS you want to migrate date from vCOPS.
• VMware recommends to turn off dynamic thresholding on vCOPS during migration. Do this to reduce CPU load on source. To do so, execute service vcops stop analytics in Analytics VM. But keep in mind, you can not use vCOPS UI as log the service is down!
• If vROPS is already in uses and collects data from other vCenters of adapters, consider to back up vROPS cluster.
• There is no rollback after migration. So think about taking a snapshot of the target vROPS node before starting.  In my opinion this is just an option if vROPS is a new installation and uses just one node, the master node.
• Check that you have enough space for target system.
• If the target vROPS cluster uses HA, disable HA for migration.
• Check time synchronization!

Migration steps

1. After the creation and start of the vROPS cluster, log in to vROPS UI. A wizard appears. Select to import data. Alternatively you can start migration out of administration UI and Solutions.
2. Enter product key.
3. Enter source IP or Hostname. Put in address of UI VM. With this step a agent gets installed on source system. This takes a few minutes.
4. Additional Solutions can be installed at this step. vCenter-Adapter is installed by default and ready to import.
5. After finishing the wizard you get redirected to vROPS UI Solutions. There you can see the state of importing process. Here you can also cancel the process at any time.

Comments

• When Migration fails during copy process, vCenter as data source for vROPS is already configured by wizard.